Hot Cocked
On Wednesday afternoon, I was sitting in a hushed, carpeted room in one of the National Science Foundation towers, in Bollston, Virginia. I was on a review panel, and we were quietly deliberating the relative mertits of a stack of proposals.
One of the reviewers, who was in constant touch with her staff and the ever-so-important world of Washington politics through her cell phone and CNN headlines, snorted loudly and exclaimed "Oh my God! They're evacuated the Capitol! One of my staffers was told to run for her life!"
A curious event to us at that point, but it did little to interrupt our deliberations.
Later on, we heard more of the story, about how everyone had gotten all excited by this little plane that got too close to the big white house so everyone got really, really concerned and started following protocols. Oh my.
Curiously, the President didn't know about any of it. He was over in Maryland riding his bike. Anyone (i.e., liberals) who wonder whether he shouldn't have been in the loop are reminded that even President Kennedy — a democrat — thought exercise was important.
How could this happen (by which I mean, the President wasn't told, rather than the equally compelling: how could he stay on his bike)? Well, it's not clear, and one suspects that he just wansn't in the loop because wouldn't have had anything useful to contribute. Of course, that can't be the official line, so this is the view from the corner that Scott McClellan painted himself into during a press conference the next day:
Q: And wasn't there a possibility that a plane headed for the White House, that this was the leading edge of some broader attack, isn't the president concerned that maybe he should have been alerted to the fact that this could have been the beginning of a general attack?
McCLELLAN: That was not the case, and I think the Department of Defense yesterday indicated that they didn't sense any hostile intent on the part of the plane, so again —
[…]
Q So if it was assessed that there was no hostile intent on the part of this aircraft, can you tell us why 30,000 people — 35,000 people were told to run for their lives?
McCLELLAN: Because of the protocols that are in place, John. We want to make sure that the people in the area of the threat are protected. After —
Q: But what was the threat? You just said there was no threat.
[Excerpts from "McClellan Spars With Press, Says No Need to Notify Bush", Editor & Publisher, 12 May 2005.]
Boiled down: there was no threat so we didn't have to tell the president, but we terrorized all the people in specific non-threatened places by telling them to run for their lives, according to our established protocols. (In another answer during the same press conference, McClellan tried the gambit that the president actually was "involved" because he had once approved the protocols that were being followed.)
All in all, a fascinating look inside the working of republican "logic".
In a related story, here's a bit from the beginning of an interview at CNN with one of the F-16 pilots who got to be one of the much-admired "first responders":
[CNN's Kyra] PHILLIPS: First of all, Colonel ["Lt. Col. Tim Lehmann, one of the two Air National Guard F-16 pilots who responded to the unauthorized aircraft"], great to have you with us. We appreciate you [sic*] talking to us. Why don't you tell us how it all began yesterday?
LEHMANN: I'd be happy to, Kyra. I actually was just about finishing my lunch when our alert klaxon went off. And we ran to the jet, and all of our F-16s, which you see in the background, are hot-cocked, and that means all their switches are ready to go. So we jumped in the airplane quickly and we rolled very quickly and are in the air. I can tell you that yesterday we were in the air at 11:57, to begin our intercept.
[from "F-16 pilot: Intercept 'a difficult period' ", CNN.com, 12 May 2005.]
I know it's tacky of me, but sometimes I think about trying to establish this as a gay blog, which means that I really need to show more of the expected nudge-nudge wink-wink behavior that demonstrates my presumed obssession with sex.
This made it way too easy. I mean: "…all our F-16s … are hot-cocked, and that means all their switchers are ready to go."
It gives me goose bumps just to hear the Colonel say his equipment is all "hot-cocked". Whew!
———-
*I know, I can be a bit of a grammar queen sometimes, but I really hate it when people who are supposed to have a professional relationship with words demonstrate that they've never been within a country mile of a gerundive in their lives. Tsk.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Such Language!
My Religion
Come to think of it, I don't think I've mentioned so far in this venue my own, personal lack of religious faith (i.e., that null set of beliefs which some people persist in confusing with a religion of its own, even though I think that that metaphysical conundrum is much simpler to resolve, say, than whether "Untitled" next to a painting in a museum is a title or a description).
Fortunately, The God FAQ tells you pretty much everything you need to know about my beliefs on the matter, and does it very lucidly, not to mention the pretty graphic.
In: All, Eureka!, Such Language!
Unconnected Bits of Countries
Thanks to a blog named Tottyland (whose author is usually more interested in shirtless rugby players than in unusual facts from geography), I recently learned this fascinating fact:
Did you know that there are twenty two bits of Belgium inside Holland including bits of fields?
"What in the world could this mean?" was my first thought. How could there be bits of one country inside another? Here is a bit of clarification from the page linked above:
Baarle-Nassau / Baarle-Hertog is a complicated mixture of Dutch and Belgian enclaves and exclaves. In 1843 a Dutch-Belgian boundary-committee couldn't demarcate a clear borderline. So they decided to establish from each piece of land between bordermarker 214 (south of Tilburg) and 215 (south of Breda) its nationality.
Ever since the days of Nixon I've been fascinated by "enclaves" (although these days it seems that "compounds" are much more in fashion), but I'd never even heard of an "exclave". Cool!
These little parcels are apparently known as the "Baarle Enclaves". From the page above, here is the key history:
The municipality of Baarle-Hertog (748 ha) is Belgian and consists of the village Zondereigen in Belgium en 22 enclaves on Dutch territory. The municipality of Baarle-Nassau (7638 ha) is Dutch and consists of the village Baarle-Nassau with 7 exclaves in the center (enclaves within the Belgian enclaves), one enclave in Zondereigen and the villages Castelré and Ulicoten.
[…]
In 1843 the borderline between the Netherlands and Belgium was described in the Treaty of Maastricht. The border between bordermarkers 214 and 215 couldn't be established for a length of 50 kilometers. An agreement was made instead which stated the Dutch or Belgian nationality of 5732 pieces of ground.
On april 26th 1974 Belgium and the Netherlands signed an agreement in Turnhout to make the actual borderlines the official border between bordermarkers 214 and 215. Afterwards one field was discovered (south of the village of Ulicoten) being not assigned to either Belgium or the Netherlands. In 1995 this field became part of Belgium as the 22th enclave of Baarle-Hertog. The municipal borders were declared to be the official state boundaries.
There are pictures there of enclave H22 taken by the authors on a visit in 2003. They've conveniently marked the boundaries of the enclave on the photos, which is a good thing since the enclave itself looks just like a small, rectangular field. On this page is shown detailed maps of the 22 Belgian and 8 Dutch enclaves (or counter-enclaves, or exclaves).
What I can't figure out is why this example of piecewise-continuous countries seemed so novel and strange to me, since it's not at all uncommon. Think of West Berlin, for example. Or Malaysia, or Micronesia. Here in the US: Hawaii is not connected to the mainland, the Caribbean protectorates are not connected, nobody even nows where Guam is, Alaska has another country between it and the next closest state, there are independent Indian Nations, and various diplomatic reserves that belong (temporarily, at least) to other countries. So, it's nothing new.
Still: "Did you know there are 22 bits of Belgium inside Holland?"
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., The Art of Conversation
The Discovery of Helium
"Observations of the 1868 [solar] eclipse led to the discovery of a bright yellow emission line in the spectrum of the [sun's] chromosphere, which is normally not observable except during a few seconds just before and just following totality [in a solar eclipse]. What happened next is nicely described by C.A. Young in the 1895 edition of his book The Sun:
The famout D3 line was first seen in 1868, when the spectroscope was for the first time directed upon a solar eclipse. Most observers supposed it to be the D line of sodium, but P.J.C. Janssen noted its non-coincidence; and very soon, when Lockyer and Frankland took up the study of the chromosphere spectrum, they found that the line could not be ascribed to hydrogen or to any then known terrestrial element. As a matter of convenient reference Frankland proposed for the unknown substance the provisional name of "helium" [after the Greek name for the sun, "helios"] …
Naturally there has been much earnest searching after the hypothetical element, but until very recently wholly without success ….
The matter remained a mystery until April, 1895, when Dr. Ramsey, who was Lord Rayleigh's chemical collaborator in the discovery of argon, in examining the gas liberated by heating a specimen of Norwegian cleveite, found in its spectrum the D3 line, conspicuous and indubitable … Cleveite is a species of uraninite or pitch blende, and it soon appeared that helium could be obtained from nearly all the uranium minerals.
"As we now know, the connection between uranium and helium is that radioactive decay of uranium involves what were at that time called alpha particles, which are helium nuclei. These nuclei pick up electrons to become atoms of helium, which can become trapped in uranium-rich rocks, to be released when the rocks are heated."
[Nearest Star: The Surprising Science of Our Sun, Leon Golub and Jay M. Pasachoff (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001) pp. 141–142.]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, The Art of Conversation
A-F Friendly
"Riff" is a great word, although I feel a bit — not quite estranged, since we never had a relationship to begin with — distant from "riff", and I doubt that I will ever be as close as I am to truly favorite words like "madcap" and "chuffed". No doubt this is tied to my being a midwestern white boy who is musical but in a white-boy way.
Once, in my high school orchestra class, we had the band director as substitute. He also led the jazz groups. He taught us how to "swing" things, which I got the hang of okay (except that it always felt a bit calculated). However, when it came to improvisation, I was hopeless. I couldn't play what I "heard" or what I "felt" — I played music that was written.
And so, I don't riff much, except perhaps in words. I can't be the only one who was captivated some years back by Ken Nordine's "Word Jazz" on NPR, can I?
Thus, I felt a bit chuffed when John Lombard blogged:
The Bearcastle Blog, also picked up by Shakespeare's Sister this week, posted this riff on the title of my Blog:
I've riffed! It's a very nice little bit of validation that I've been waiting decades for.
(He refers to his blog's name mostly by the considerably shorter acronym "TMYHNIHMIHBADITGE"; for the longer version, you can see my original post or follow the link above.)
Several years back, when I first started writing the bear porn, I had a mentor who encouraged me and helped me along with that terrifying step of asking the publisher to publish a story for the first time. When that story was published, I was delighted to find that a story by my mentor, Charlie, was in the same magazine issue! It wasn't a superstitious thing, I don't believe, but some sort of confirming cosmic confluence. Whatever, it was good.
So, I was pleased when Shakespeare's Sister mentioned me in her Blogrollin' post, just because I quite like the stuff she writes, so it had some value to me. It was also a delightful thing to be mentioned in the same breath as "TMYHNIHMIHBADITGE", which has been fun reading so far and a nice addition to my blogroll. Besides, John's profile says he's from Brisbane, Australia, and my fantasies have been well enough stoked by pictures of hunky Aussie life-savers in their little red bikini swimming suits that I may have a fatal attraction to men from Australia. Besides, we may have a similar sense of humor (for which the world might be grateful that we half a world apart.)
Now, while we're on the subject of words, a curious point arises. At the end of John's post (for reasons you'll have to discover for yourself), he makes this gloriously positive assertion:
Yep, we're ass-fucking friendly here at TMYHNIHMIHBADITGE.
I can't remember whether I've ever typed the "f-word" here in the blog (yes, I've used it enough times in the stories), so I don't know whether I'll start now or later or ever. However, I can circumvent all those anxieties by quoting it, as above, without compunction.
Thanks John!
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Such Language!
Where's Kansas?
I am from Kansas. Kansas City, Kansas in fact. We're the smaller city on the other side of the Missourie River from Kansas City, Missouri. We are the ones with the attitude: why does everyone think Missouri when it's called Kansas City?
It's a fine city — either one, actually, since they rather merge together into one large metropolis, but Kansas is a strange place to be from. Although it is placed in the "Heart of America", one can feel like one comes from a different planet when one travels to other civilized regions. I went to the East Coast after a sojourn in Iowa for college, landing first in New England, then North Carolina, and finally settling here in Maryland where I've lived now for over 20 years.
I adored Iowa, by the way: a state where all the farm boys go to college to study classics and then return to their farms, reading Greek in their tractors as they plow the fields. Iowa has over thirty colleges and universities, and approximately twenty community colleges. Believe it or not, Iowa has the nation's highest literacy rate and a high school graduation rate over 20% above the nation's norm. It also rates first in corn production, hog raising, and farm-machinery manufacturing (home to John Deere, of course!). I saw my first tractor pull competition at a county fair in Iowa, and it was thrilling. (The Deere headquarters, in Moline, was designed by Eero Saarinen and has a pool in the front of the building decorated with a large sculpture by Henry Moore.)
My favorite little joke about Iowa, no doubt apocryphal, involves a young woman from Iowa who made the trek to New York City. At a party she shared conversation with a very sophisticated New Yorker. When asked where she was from, she said "Iowa". The very sophisticated lady replied "My dear, out here we pronounce that 'Ohio'".
Anyway, back to Kansas. The joke there was when people asked if we still had problems with the Indians, I would say that we put the station wagons in a circle every night. People in the east had a very skewed view of what it was like to be from Kansas.
(Or from anywhere in the midwest. My fellow midwesterners of a certain age will no doubt remember the "maps of the USA" as drawn by New Englanders: A huge blob for New England to the right, an elongated thingie for California on the left, and a big bridge over the Mississippi River connecting the two. When asked whether they had been "out west", the typical New Englander could be counted on to answer "Oh yes: Pennsylvania".)
Not just the East of the US, I suppose. My grad-school friend Andrea, who was born in Czechoslovakia, claimed that in her youth she believed that "Kansas" was a fabulous, mythical place, known of course from the movies. She was amazed later to discover that it actually existed.
Kansas, known to many as flat, flat, flat, actually has many parts and characters. In the east, where I grew up, the landscape is gently rolling hills. It's not until one reaches the western third of the state that one gets finally to the Great Plains, the enormous prairies that have to be seen to be understood. Out west, it is indeed flat, flat, flat: one can watch a thunderstorm pass by miles and miles away, and when the wind blows it seems to have been blowing forever. I've know people to react by extremes when they first see the Plains. Some feel that they've glimpsed the hand of God in something so big, others become acutely agoraphobic and feel a pressing need to return to a place where the horizon is comfortably within arm's reach.
Rachel McCarthy James, in her piece "Shall we call you Dorothy?", in the Lawrence [KS] Journal-World, wrote
People at my school, Hollins University [in Virginia], tend to be surprised that I'm from Kansas, surprised by the very existence of a real, live Kansan. Kansas is uninhabited territory, a flyover state, the wild, wild Midwest. At my initial hall meeting, I said I was from a small city in Kansas, and the initial reactions were, "They have cities in Kansas?" "They have people in Kansas?" "Aren't there, like, seven people there?" It's interesting to offer yourself up as proof of existence of a state; almost all of my friends had never met a Kansan, been to Kansas, or really thought of Kansas as more than Dorothy's place or one of those states in the Bible Belt. I tend to refute whatever perceptions people have of Kansans; I'm just not what they expect.
[…]
But as anyone who's left the state knows, there is one giant, looming, figure that towers over all factors in someone's thoughts about Kansas: Dorothy. Toto. The Wizard of Oz.
Ah yes, Dorothy. We in Kansas feel rather proprietary about Dorothy. I used to claim that she lived just down the street and that Toto was a nuisance: ill behaved and prone to pooping in everyone's yard.
Now that I've gotten to this point, I'm not sure what I want to say about Dorothy. These days I've gotten older, some life situations have been threatening or challenging, and I feel more nostalgic, not to mention a certain kinship with Dorothy and her dreams. I guess even those of us who are salt of the earth from the heartland wish sometimes that we could go over the rainbow to someplace better, just like Dorothy.
And her little dog, too.
Original Meaning Means…?
From "Justice Scalia critical of 'living Constitution'", by Rachel Graves (Houston Chronicle, 5 May 2005):
COLLEGE STATION – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia portrayed himself in a speech here today as one of a dying breed of judges who strictly interpret the Constitution.
"The Constitution, when it comes before a court, should mean exactly what it was intended to mean when it was adopted, nothing more, nothing less," Scalia told a generally supportive audience of several hundred people at the George Bush Presidential Library.
I might, just might grant that the courts might be able, through careful scholarship and such activities that they seem disinclined actually to pursue, to divine some of the "original intent" of the guys who wrote the Constitution.
But wait! "When it was adopted." Whew, now there's a bit of a challenge. I can see being all constitutionally deconstructionist and like that and being careful to read only on the lines and not between them, but "when it was adopted". What does he mean by that?
I can only assume Justice Scalia means, when referring to each of the Constitutional amendments that were, of course, adopted at different times by differing numbers of voters in several states, the original intent of all the people in those states at the moment when they voted for each of the amendments in the years over which each amendment was adopted.
Quite a task there, but then, they are The Supremes [cue theme music].
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Borrow @ the Fetish Bank
In my continuing fascination with the search strings that bring visitors to my blog or other websites, I was momentarily slackjawed to see this phrase as a search string:
Fetish Bank
What in the world could it mean? What might a "Fetish Bank" be?
At first my thought was that it might be a place, a littoral sort of bank — perhaps the "Fetish Bank" was to be found across a wide, wide river opposite the "Normal Bank" or somesuch.
But then the much more appealing idea struck me that the "Fetish Bank" might be a place, but more of an institution or organization, a lending bank, one where a not-so-adverturous person might work up the nerve to visit and check-out something a little more exotic than the usual Friday-night missionary pleasure.
Possibly there could be different departments: Leather Fetish Goods, S/M Lending, things to do with feet, clothing to try on for a little cross-dressing tingle. What would the tellers wear? How to help patrons feel comfortable asking for the desired fetish.
Gosh, what about deposits? Perhaps it is, indeed, past my bedtime.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Superior Richard
Herewith, more gratitude and boot licks to Shakespeare's Sister for mentioning my blog in her Friday Blogrollin'. I appreciate it.
I can see, though, that I'm going to have to write more about bears (i.e., big hairy men with beards, more or less) if I'm to remain a resource. Up to now most of my accounts have been fictional (see the link above for Jay Neal if you want to know more).
I was very impressed by the title of another blog in this week's list:
Trust Me, You Have No Idea How Much I Hate Bush—and Dick Isn’t That Great Either*
However, I have to quibble: although I can agree with the first part of the name, I'm afraid I can't go along with the second assertion. For my part, and this may only be because I'm a gay man, I think dick is really pretty great.
This reminds me of an ongoing dispute I had years ago online with a younger gay man. When the occasion arose, he would sometimes describe someone or something as "butt ugly".
"John, John," I'd say, "show a little sense. You're a gay man — you have a keen appreciation for the beauty of butts. Why in the world would you say they're ugly?" I've never quite understood.
But then, I've never really understood using "ass hole" as a term of disapprobation. I don't know, maybe it's another gay thing, but I generally feel much more affection towards ass holes than I do towards the people one is likely to call an ass hole.
But I'd better stop there before I get too far into the ick zone.
———-
*Just under the link to his profile, John Lombard says "Even Aussies think Bush is a shmuck-face". That's brilliant, mate! All without reference to butts and ass holes, too.
Conservative Queers Need Self Respect
What in the world, many of us wonder, is really the driving force behind all those Log Cabin Republicans? I know, I've listened for too many years to rationalizations that go along these lines: "Some of us [i.e., conservative queers] just feel that there are more important things than our private sexuality."
There are (at least) two things wrong with that idea, of course: 1) there is nothing "private" about our sexuality when the anti-gay forces are always willing to holler and point and drag us through the mud just to raise a buck under their Jesus banner; and 2) what is more important than life & liberty when the anti-gay hate groups really would rather see us dead?
For a few years there, some of us lefty fags were willing to believe that maybe, just maybe, the con-queers believe so deeply in smaller government and libertarian values that perhaps we should cut them some slack. However, the last two elections have made it clear that that can't be the reason.
This rumination all came about because Shakespeare's Sister said (in reference to the moral theatre of the absurd that is conservative queers in "More on Outed Spokane Mayor Jim West")
Get with the program, conservative queers. They not only don’t want you in their party; they hate you. Have some self respect and get the fuck out of that party.
They'll kick and they'll scream and they'll button down their collars ever more tightly and claim it isn't so at the top of their lungs with their hands clapped over their ears, but that's still the answer: they ain't got no self respect. Self-hatred, queer loathing, bad body image, internalized homophobia, whatever: they ain't got no self respect.
Guys, you've had plenty of time to learn the lesson by now, so get over yourselves, get over your issues, and get some self respect. For yourself. Next week might be too late.
Dobson's Group Not "Religious"
Via John Aravosis at AMERICAblog
First, Microsoft caves to anti-gay radicals in the name of diversity, and before that, ABC refused to run a pro-diversity ad for the United Church of Christ. The reason ABC gave the UCC for denying their ad:
"The network doesn't take advertising from religious groups. It's a long-standing policy," said Susan Sewell, an ABC spokeswoman
You can therefore imagine everyone's surprise when ABC months later accepted an ad from the radical right religious group Focus on the Family.
Which really just goes to show what we knew all along: Dobson's group really is just a hate-mongering organization and not a religious organization. It seems pretty obvious: the UCC is undoubtedly a religious group, and Dobson's little group is not like the UCC, therefore they are not a religious group. So says ABC. And if they can't be trusted, who can?
It's almost as good as the resolution in "Miracle on 34th Street" where the judge is willing to accept the authority of the United States Post Office that the guy on trial is indeed Santa Clause.
In: All, Eureka!, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Seven Gummi Sins
I was way behind on my on-line reading today, as I have been for most of the last week or two. This did, however, create quite a curious sensation of other-reality-ness as I caught up on some 300 or so items at Boing Boing. The most memorable was their link to a set of photographs called "The Seven Gummi Sins", by Wiedmaier.
They are odd, but curiously compelling and beautiful photographs. This is what attracts me, of course. It is a set of seven photographs, close up and in rich color, of Gummi Bears (one or more, as needed) posed allegorically, mostly between a pair of fingers, and illustrating the "Seven Deadly Sins".
It's a tough choice, but I think my favorite is the one illustrating "Envy": richly evocative, expressive through depth of field, and symbolic in its use of the green Gummi. This is the photo that Boing Boing included with their bit. However, the series makes its own impact as a collection, and I encourage a viewing. Fabulous.
The Appalling Hostility toward Equality
With regard to the "gay agenda" that has certain groups whipped into a frenzy ("Groups say bills push gay agenda," April 25), I would ask that as they proceed with their lobbying against such outrageous legislation as a bill [in the Maryland General Assembly] that would ensure that people can designate medical decision-makers, perhaps those groups could enlighten the rest of us on what exactly the "gay agenda" is.
While I await their answer, I thought I would offer a guess. It seems to me that the "gay agenda" promotes marriage, loyalty to one's partner, social responsibility and civic pride, not to mention an ethic of work.
Proponents of this agenda apparently hold such values as monogamy and commitment in high esteem. Some of them feel so strongly about their relationships that they would choose to make a public testament to their monogamy and commitment by getting married, if allowed to do so.
They want to be allowed to stand by their partners' bedsides in hospitals, own property together, pay taxes together, take care of each other and their communities.
That is a pretty outrageous agenda, if you ask me. Who are these gay activists to fight the 50 percent divorce rate of heterosexual marriages, the countless children born out of wedlock, the rampant adultery and the marriages based on a whim?
[…]
Jeanette Nazarian
Catonsville [MD]
[Op/Ed section, "The appalling hostility toward equality", The Baltimore Sun, 30 April 2005.]
Scopes II in the Land of Dorothy
The not-very-clever farce dealing with what to teach in the biology classroom set to appear on stage in Kansas (my home state, recall), sometimes referred to as "Scopes II", seems almost universally recognized as a waste of taxpayer's money in aid of giving free press to the anti-evolutionary crowd currently crusading under the banner of "Intelligent Design". The crusaders are feeling confident because they are certain that their "new" theory is really, really scientific this time.
It strikes me just today that, for people so opposed to the idea of evolution, this group and their antics are a laboratory for the study of Social Darwinism, regardless of whether Social Darwinism is even true.
Watch in astonishment as they keep honing their "theory" in the hopes that enough people can be tricked into thinking that it's scientific! For years, decades — over a century since Darwin, I suppose — they've been casting about and trying to find some approach, some concept, any idea that will give them an edge and let them hoodwink people into believe that evolutionary biology is an enormous conspiracy perpetrated by evil scientists to convince the good Christian masses that God has died, or something like that.
For awhile it was that whole "monkey" thing and variants, but people finally seemed to start understanding what common descent really meant, and natural selection started getting the popular-press distortions that greeted other major scientific/conceptual breakthroughs, like relativity and quantum mechancis and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle; you know that scientific concepts have made progress when lots of people misunderstand them so thoroughly.
As they continue their search for something, evolving their strategy to find a non-scientific means to scuttle a branch of science politically, we've seen "creationism", "scientific creationism", and others that I can't remember the names of. Currently, the fashion is for "Intelligent Design", marketed as scientific but really just a form of "creationism" from which they believe just enough religion has been expunged to claim that it is "scientific" and not religious. This is hogwash, of course, since the evolutionary descent from biblical fundamentalism is still so clear.
Anwyay, there's this event going on in Kansas. It's summarized beautifully in the article, "Your OFFICIAL program to the Scopes II Kansas Monkey Trial", by Tony Ortega, published by The Pitch, 5 April 2005. (Thanks to Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas for pointing it out.)
Mr. Ortega's writing is refreshing because he looks at the truth of the matter, rather than following contemporary journalistic non-standards of simply quoting a bunch of fools and having done with it.
For example:
Intelligent-design advocates have dressed up their arguments in scientific-sounding speech, but their objections to evolution have been around since Charles Darwin first published his theory in 1859. Intelligent-design proponents will claim that evolution is a failed theory that's being abandoned by scientists. (It isn't.) They'll say the news media suppress the huge controversy that is actually raging over evolution in scientific circles. (We aren't, because there isn't one.) They'll claim that evolution requires scientists to give up their religious beliefs and adopt an immoral, materialistic belief system. (It doesn't.) And if we're really lucky, they'll try to explain to nonscientist school-board members how the proteins in the flagella of tiny bacteria inspire their theories.
The schoolboard went to some trouble to try to find some real scientist to come and "debate" in favor of real science, but most professional scientific groups have decided to boycott the event, which is just fine. Participating really wouldn't accomplish anything except lend some legitimacy to the creationists who think they're now scientific.
Famed evolution-proponent and now-infamous atheist Richard Dawkins took their measure without any nonsense:
"As I am sure you are aware, the state of Kansas has made itself the laughingstock of the scientific world over this issue," wrote Oxford University professor and well-known author Richard Dawkins to the state board after he got his invitation. "The very idea of 'representatives from both views' presupposes that there are two views to represent…. For real scientists to share a platform with the biological equivalent of flat-earthers would be to give them the credibility, respectability, and above all publicity that they crave. I am sorry, but count me out."
Scientists, in face of an irrational, non-scientific onslaught like this, tend to come off appearing naive and tentative. I've heard explanations before that scientists tend to be gullible because we are used to dealing with Nature which, although it can be difficult to figure out, doesn't try to deceive us. Of course, ID crusaders are anti-scientific in their "theories" and their strategies to enforce biblical fundamentalism, and this tends perhaps to keep real scientists perplexed. Why, we wonder, would anyone go to so much trouble to lie and cheat and dissemble just to come over and foul our sandbox? Why don't they go and do their own science — it's open to everyone and insists on only a few simple rules. The enemy is incomprehensible — we don't even understand why they're fighting! — and we scientists would prefer just to be left alone to get on with advancing rational knowledge.*
And — goodness! — what would he have been up against? Mr. Ortega gives this sketch of one of the schoolboard members and her fierce fight for truth:
If there were ever any question what a farce the "trial" is, [Schoolboard member and former teacher (that's scary!)] Kathy Martin removed all doubt a couple of weeks ago, when she gave an interview to the Clay Center Dispatch.
"We are not going to give up until the standards say what we want them to say," Martin told the paper. "Evolution has been proven false. ID is science-based and strong in facts."
Just to show off her stellar science credentials, Martin explained, "Man has changed and evolved, but we are not going to change back into monkeys." Her other statements regarding evolution, which included making outdated distinctions between "microevolution" and "macroevolution," came right out of the creationist playbook.
But Martin went way off-message when the Dispatch reporter asked whether ID was just Christian creationism in disguise. Her answer could only have given ID proponents fits: "Of course this is a Christian agenda. We are a Christian nation. Our country is made up of Christian conservatives. We don't often speak up, but we need to stand up and let our voices be heard."
Moreover, the former schoolteacher argued, "Why shouldn't theology be taught in the classroom? Morality ought to be taught in every class. Prayer ought to be allowed. Whenever a child wanted to pray in class, I prayed with them. All children believe in God. Even little children whose parents don't take them to church believe in God."
I still shake my head, lacking any comprehension of why these people feel it is so important to deny science and what it does for them, regardless of whether they believe in it. I still hope that this is just a short-term if somewhat extreme death rattle of the unenlightened and not the edge of the curtain of irrationality lowering to usher in a new dark age.
———-
* There's some truth in the old joke about the physicist who values having both a partner and a lover: the partner will think s/he's with the lover, the lover will imagine s/he's with the partner, so s/he really can spend more time in the lab.
In: All, Speaking of Science, Splenetics
Men of Faith
Actually, holy alliance would be a better phrase. Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.
[Richard Dawkins, quoted in "The Atheist", by Gordy Slack, salon.com, 28 April 2005.]
Gay Ed. for Teens
In a fascinatingly frank story, "Bashing Gays and Children" (by Amy Smith, 29 April 2005), the Austin [TX] Chronicle fills us in on the antics of "the gay-obsessed GOP rep from Pasadena [Texas], Robert Talton". It seems that he added an amendment to a Texas House bill that would "launch an $8 million inquisition into the sexual orientation of current and prospective foster parents and uproot thousands of children from their homes and schools." By a wide margin, the house accepted the amendment.
The Chronicle continues:
That the majority of the House would buy into this clown's amendment really irked SB 6's author, Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville. She vowed to "strenuously object" to the amendment's staying in the bill. Not only would the provision wreak havoc on the lives of thousands of children, she said, but it would open the door to an onslaught of lawsuits against the state. It's a rare day when progressives look to [the Republican] Nelson for leadership and guidance on social issues, but these are desperate times. Nelson, and the rest of the Senate for that matter, is not given to the kind of stunts that we've come to expect in the House of horrors.
The previous paragraph, however, was the one that caught my eye:
The amendment was introduced and defended in vintage Talton fashion: an angry scowl that would frighten little children. Gay foster parents, he said, are "teaching something that is not conducive to our traditional families. God created man, and he created woman, and he created marriage." He went on to talk about homosexuality as a learned behavior, "and I think a child … ought to have the opportunity to be presented to a traditional family as such." He allowed that a child should have to wait until he or she turns 18 before making that "choice" to be gay or straight.
First: there is a priceless picture accompanying the story, believably depicting the scowling Talton. It transcends "angry" and would even frighten adults, I'd say.
But what an idea: a law that would prevent children from deciding to become gay until they were 18! Would there be courses in fabulosity, how to decorate, accessorizing for the cross-dresser, what to say to your goat on a first date? Perhaps then we'd all know when and where to get our fabled "gay cards". Faaabulous!
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
"Caused by Physics"
Before the Nazi rise to power, German society bloomed with cultural, artistic, and social openness, as did the United States in the last third of the twentieth century. The dominant culture enriched itself by cross-pollinating with other groups. Creativity, innovation, and freedom held sway in art, music, drama, and dance. In lifestyle choices, openness and experimentation were possible.
A part of this bubbling cultural ferment was caused by physics. We think of physics as an esoteric branch of science that is of interest only to the The Few, The Proud, The Geeks whose quirky neuroanatomy makes them able to emote in equations. But where physics goes, culture follows. The big metaphors in all areas are based on the physics of our time. And both Nazi Germany and the American Whatever-the-Hell-You-Call-What-We-Are-Becoming were preceded by advances in physics that announced reality to be much different from what we’d always assumed it to be. In the early part of the twentieth century, Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s physics of relativity and uncertainty—largely centered in German universities—proclaimed that some of our most fundamental understandings about the universe were Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. As quantum mechanics and the new cosmology developed in the later part of the twentieth century—largely centered in U.S. universities—their outrageous paradoxical observations once again taught the lesson that common sense isn’t always right. Things aren’t always—or ever—the way they seem.
["Yesterday and Today: Nazis and the Righteous Right", by Donna Glee Williams, 2 May 2005.]
Rickets & Windows
File under "unintended consequences":
In 1696 a window tax was inroduced in Britain when the financially hard-pressed govenment started taxing properties based on the number of windows. The citizenry responded by bricking up windows and the darker houses are thought to have contributed to an increased incidence of rickets and tuberculosis.
[David Whitehouse, The Sun: A Biography (Wiley, Chichester, 2005), p. 93.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Eddington on Protons
Famed astronomer & mathematician Sir Arthur Eddington:
I believe there are 15, 747, 724, 136, 275, 002, 577, 605, 653, 961, 181, 555, 468, 044, 717, 914, 527, 116, 709, 366, 231, 425, 076, 185, 631, 031, 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.
[Quoted in The Sun: A Biography, by David Whitehouse (Wiley, Chichester, 2004) p. 170.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
A-Felching We Will Go
The past week has been a busy one here at Björnslottet: my father has been visiting, we did two final performances of "On the Twentieth Century" last weekend, we got the house ready for the cast party this last Friday night, I had my forty-ninth birthday on Saturday, and I was preoccupied all week with thoughts of a possible new job (and career — more as it develops) following an interview only last week. Phew.
I'm also behind: behind on reading, behind on writing, way behind on fiction writing, perpetually behind on e-mail and gardening and sending thank-you notes, which I usually think of but never quite manage to do. I'm just not an "ahead" type of person, I guess.
How fortunate for me, then, that Shakespeare's Sister has spent the week coming up with fabulous posts for her blog, so all I have to do is provide links and say go read her stuff instead. Think of this as an encomium of sorts, a sop to my own residual protestant guilt at not writing as much as I wanted.
A mere weekend ago, the sorry spectacle of Microsoft's betrayal of their gay and lesbian employees, stockholders, and customers was a big story; it seems that it's still simmering, but who can tell whether it will boil over. At any rate, when S'sS saw the news that the LA Gay & Lesbian Center asked Microsoft to return the Corporate Vision Award that the Center can now see in retrospect was given to them in error, she was tickled pink, to judge by her reaction.
She also restates a fact, one that seems almost hackneyed by now but is nevertheless apparently true, that
Creative fields have historically attracted and continue to be disproportionately filled with gays and lesbians: art, film, music, graphic design, architecture, interior design, writing, advertising, marketing, etc.
We can all think of pop-psych reasons why, but it's still true regardless. Unfortunately, it seems that all us internally anguished and tortured homos keep on creatin' no matter how much society gets down on us — I'd really hate to think, though, that oppression by faith-based hate groups makes the music and the painting and the invention better. Alas, we've never all gone on strike (although I do remember an attempt to organize a strike of Hollywood hairdressers to get political wives to put the pressue on their husbands…).
Not to mention that an awful lot of those creative people are the nerdy, antisocial, sometimes femmy geeks that make the Microscoft products work to the extent that they do. What an awful thing, to throw away the goodwill of all those productive employees with such carelessness. Tsk. As I've mentioned elsewhere, that goodwill doesn't come back nearly so quickly as it disperses. Reflect: when Cracker Barrel finally changed it's corporately enforced policy of discriminating against homos, no one really got all that excited about the improvement.
Moments later, S'sS (in "Women, They’re Coming For You Next") relates an irritating little story about misogyny and domestic-violence legislation. The incident itself seems so tiny, so petty, and so trivial that most middle-aged white men would have no trouble whatsoever missing the point entirely — and that's what makes it so very disappointing. It's about women this time, but as we discover, the civil rights of all can quickly be imperiled.
At any rate, it let S'sS ruminate on her answers to the question:
I’ve been asked why I am so passionate about fighting for gay rights when I myself am not gay.
It's poetry and truth. One could only wish that gays and lesbians cared half as much about their own liberty.
In "Women: Soon to be Officially Defined by Their Babymaking Abilities?", S'sS gives a short but precise analysis of a new congressional "definition" of "woman"
WOMAN- The term `woman' means a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority.
By this point, you might be able to imagine that her commentary will be pointed and sharp.
I don't know that I was ever a big fan of Al Gore, although I was far from a detractor. Perhaps it's because I can see some characteristics in Gore that I see in myself and would prefer to replace with stronger, more assertive characteristics. Regardless, I was grateful for the few hundred words of "I Love Al Gore" that helped me towards an increased appreciation — a positive increase in appreciation of any political figure is rare these days.
Quiet, reasoned discourse momentarily steps aside to let through a high-speed locomotive carrying this emergency message in "Unmitigated Bigotry in Alabama":
Who does this motherfucker think he is?! Censorship isn’t healthy for America. Bigotry isn’t healthy for America. Small-minded, sanctimonious, ignorant, prejudiced, witch-hunting, piece-of-shit dirtbags who bloviate about a fictitious “homosexual agenda” while simultaneously managing to find homosexual undertones in everything he reads aren’t healthy for America.
The answer to the rhetorical question is: Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen. The italics and boldface are original. Sometimes it's necessary to raise one's voice and pound the table to make a point, and so much more effective not to do it all the time!
Finally, I'll end by noting that Ss'S makes all the commentary (and more and better than I) about another collection of moronic remarks about gay people, this time made by
North Carolina County Commissioner, Bill James, whose hatred for homosexuals is only matched by his apparent obsession with their sexual behavior.
The root of the problem: he wants to get a rise out of his listeners by denouncing the horrible, homosexual perversion of "felching", but: 1) he doesn't know what it is; and 2) he can't even spell it correctly. It all makes for a bit of good, clean sport in "Felch You".
For some reason the idea puts me in mind of Isaac's favorite Pennsylvania-Dutch syntactical form which, in this instance, would constuct a sentence along these lines:
Felch me over that gerbil.
But enough already.
Contrary to appearances, this post is not just an excuse to create a half-dozen trackbacks in a double-barreled attempt at self-agrandizement and blog-traffic pump-up-ing, although I admit that that may be a side effect, obviously not unintended now that I've mentioned it. However, if I'm going to do it to anyone, I'll do it to Shakespeare's Sister who is blessed for coming up with the idea that she called "Friday Blog Whorin'", with which I occasionally indulge myself when I think I've been writing something notably, delightfully odd.
Most recently that probably would have been my post about "Chicken Feathers", which I found particualarly satisfying. I liked its combination of interesting facts, reasonably good narrative, and unexpected juxtapositions.
Yesterday, after having accompanied the choir (see the amazing cello-playing atheist!) for the anthem at Isaac's church (i.e., the one where he is the music director), a young (8-year-old) friend asked me some question to which I gave what I thought was a particularly creative answer. She squinted up at me and said "You know, you're very weird." Naturally, I said "Thank you."
She gave her hear a little shake and amended her statement: "No, very, very weird." We made a tacit agreement that that was an even better assessment.
Be that as it may, this started out as a nod of appreciation towards someone whose writing I continue to enjoy, and I think I'll try to let it end that way.